Stephen Daisley

Leaving aside those who have parted with a right old wodge of dosh over the years, there are mainly two kinds of life peer: those who are no longer a threat to their party’s leader, and those who still are. For the former, the House of Lords is a retirement home; for the latter, the

At this point there is only one way to salvage Reform’s Scottish Parliament election campaign. Granted it’s unorthodox and, well, illegal, but hear me out: arrange to have Malcolm Offord kidnapped. Not long-term or anything, just until 7 May and the Holyrood elections in which Reform Scotland is set to make sizeable gains. Or at

Have we just witnessed an Iranian attack on British soil? Overnight, four ambulances were burned on the premises of Hatzola, a Jewish charity in Golders Green that operates a fleet of medical response vehicles in north London. The vans were parked beside Machzike Hadath synagogue on Highfield Road. The Metropolitan Police are said to be

The Scottish Parliament is on the brink of passing a bill that would see Catholic hospitals and care homes shut down. The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland says it is ‘deeply disappointed’ by the rejection of an amendment to the Assisted Dying Bill that would have given institutions a right of conscientious objection. If the bill

Farewell, then, Alba, the little party that tried to take on the Scottish political establishment and learned, as others had before it, that the establishment always wins. You can join it but you can never beat it. When Salmond went, so did Alba’s soul Just to rub salt into the wound, the party has imploded

Ian Huntley’s graveside will be a lonely one. Few will mourn a man who lurked in the darkest shadows of every parent’s imagination, occupying the same space that Ian Brady did for an earlier generation. You could raise your children in loving, stable homes; in quiet, leafy villages; teach them about stranger danger, give them

The higher the failings of multiculturalism pile up, the greater the effort required to ignore the fetid mound of societal consequences. But most of the political and commentary class is prepared to put in the shift. So Kemi Badenoch’s latest speech was a crisp break from the omerta that binds together our gutless establishment. Multiculturalism

And with that, what was once racist is now allowed to be said. What was yesterday a conspiracy theory is today a legitimate observation. In the wake of the Gorton and Denton by-election, which the Greens won handsomely with an ethnic sectarian campaign designed to maximise the Pakistani-heritage vote, the Labour establishment is abuzz with

Progressivism is politics as fashion. The product is status and provocation the marketing strategy. The socialist, the liberal and the conservative all address themselves to material circumstances, and aim to transform them radically, gradually, or as little as possible, but the progressive is concerned with the intangibles of life: identity, meaning and self-expression. His radicalism

It wouldn’t be Scottish politics if there wasn’t an abstruse scandal that requires a half-hour of background information to explain. So, here goes: Dorothy Bain KC is the Lord Advocate, the title given to the head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. In addition to being the chief prosecutor north of the border,

I don’t know if ‘gaun yersel, yer excellency’ translates into Japanese but the salutation is on the lips of many a Glaswegian after Hiroshi Suzuki’s visit to the city. Japan’s ambassador to the Court of St James’s has been love-bombing the United Kingdom since his appointment in 2024, making his way around the country with

Want to know what kind of country you live in? You live in a country in which there are more than 300 antisemitic incidents a month. Three-hundred. Every month. Last year, there were 80 incidents on Yom Kippur alone, including the Islamist attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester which resulted in the deaths of

There is a 1953 Warner Bros short, Zipping Along, in which Wile E. Coyote, frustrated with the failure of his elaborate schemes to kill the Road Runner, opts for a simpler method. He acquires a grenade, pulls the pin with his teeth, and chucks the explosive at the infernal Californian cuckoo. Only he does it

The most reliable sign that Reform is doing well in Scotland is the refusal of the lanyard class to engage with the subject. In the latest poll, Reform has cut the SNP’s lead to five points on the regional list, the second, more proportional ballot that offers smaller and newer parties their best chance of

Labour MPs want shot of Keir Starmer over the Peter Mandelson scandal. There is nothing new in that sentence until the mention of the former ambassador. Mandelson’s reported disclosure of government information to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is the latest pretext, but before that it was because he rebuffed the Waspi women, and before